HP’s chief commercial officer Dave McQuarrie sat down with CRN Australia to discuss some of the key areas of growth for HP within the upcoming year.
During HP’s Amplify Partner Conference in Chicago, McQuarrie discussed various recurring revenue opportunities for partners, and shared HP’s plans to increase their use of artificial intelligence (AI) to benefit partners.
Throughout this conference, HP also announced changes to its partner program, shared new printing products and sustainable toner, launched updates to its security platform Wolf Connect, unveiled its new Workforce Central platform, and discussed industry trends.
Recurring Revenue
McQuarrie described print as the “most advanced, mature, recurring revenue part of HP’s portfolio and partner community.”
“The hybrid twist on that is; how do we allow for the office printer and the printer that might be in the home or that might be in the school or wherever they are to be under a single contract or offering?”
HP announced it would roll out its Instant Ink program for small businesses, where ink is delivered to customers before its expected to run out, using IoT, a topic which HP president of imaging, printing and solutions Tuan Tran spoke about at the conference.
McQuarrie added that HP “has a recurring revenue business that partners can participate in. Within the consumer printing space, Instant Ink has over 12 million subscribers and HP works with many of those 12 million through our partners.”
“This allows retailers in Australia to sell that solution so that when a customer buys from a JB-Hi-Fi or other reseller, a recurring revenue capability has been enabled. Partners don’t have to do it themselves so they don't have to worry about financing it,” he said.
McQuarrie shared that HP is working on providing more subscription services, stating that HP has been expanding from Instant Ink to Instant paper.
“Ink is only half of the equation, but what you print on is the other half. We have launched this in a number of markets as we aimed to provide more subscription services to consumers and small businesses.”
In regards to selling PCs in a recurring revenue style, McQuarrie said “we do have some partners who are really good at it already, where their value is to take a transactional product like a PC and turn it into a monthly cost.”
He explained that ‘for those partners, it's about making sure that the services and the security and the software that we offer can be augmented or can augment what they offer so it can improve the security of the device or the network and improve the support experience.”
“One example that we are offering already that's in the market today is called Proactive Insights where it'll tell us and tell the user, reseller or HP, depending on how you want it to be served, that a potential problem is coming."
"That type of capability just expands the value that a customer gets over the lifetime of the device,” McQuarrie said.
How HP utilises artificial intelligence
McQuarrie also shared that HP plans to increase their use of AI over the coming year.
“In many of our products, AI is already providing additional customer experience,” he said.
McQuarrie highlighted that HP is using AI within their smart device solutions to help predict when problems might occur within HP products, aiming to rectify the issues before they become a problem.
“Data and telemetry are being collected so that AI can then analyse whether it tells us something to help the customer,” he said.
“We also have a whole line-up of workstations that that help people use AI to help other customers so the data science community is buying a lot of equipment from us with our software and our solutions."
"So that they can use AI and provide AI solutions to other customers,” McQuarrie continued.
He also shared that HP is aiming to increase the number of partners using its Instant Quotes tool from 50 per cent of deals to 70 per cent of deals by mid-2023.
The tool allows partners to receive a quote almost instantly rather than having to wait for a salesperson or a partner manager to approve and get back to them.
McQuarrie said that HP uses an “AI engine to provide speed, analytics, and a good price.”
“The goal is to provide the most appropriate pricing, and appropriate doesn't always mean lowest, it can be to maintain value."
"Finding the right price for a particular deal based on the size of the deal, the customer, anything we know about the competitive environment. That’s the benefit of AI.”
“There are many other AI areas that we are beginning to look at to improve speed or accuracy or both, in terms of how we serve partners,” McQuarrie continued.
“As an Australian, I would love to see Australian [partners] grow better, faster and with more of an urgency."
"Because it is in the culture of Australians to want to get stuff done, they're entrepreneurial."
"I'd love for HP to be their partner of choice and to be the company that's able to help propel their growth,” McQuarrie concluded.
Amelia Norris attended the HP Amplify Partner Conference as a guest of HP.
